New brewer in Vegas

[tominator]

Greetings all! Just wanna say hi and thank everyone for not only providing tons of info, but also there's not a lot of that condescending-know it all attitude that I've seen in other forums. This is just a great community.

Anyway, long time beer drinker, first time brewer. Got a Mr. Beer kit for Christmas from supercool mother-in-law. I stumbled thru 3 brews using that system before upgrading to 5-gallon equipment (buckets, bottling wand, racking cane, etc. etc.). Mr. Beer was a great way to start but as most of us have discovered, it did produce beer but it wasn't all that spectacular. Kinda like store brand cola compared to The Real Thing Brew #4 was a True Brew Maestro IPA which turned out tasty enough to actually want to drink It had specialty grains along with LME and hops. My plans are to do a few more extract/specialty grains recipes, put together using BeerSmith 2 rather than boxed kits. I'll post my recipe ideas shortly, feel free to comment!

I've been lurking here for a few months, reading/searching/geeking and just about any question I can think of so far has been answered. I'm very excited about my new hobby and the support there seems to be here in this forum.

Thanks for reading! CHEERS!
Tom
LET'S GO RED WINGS!!!

 

[discooby]

Hey there, welcome to HBT. Nice to see another Vegas brewer here… “there are others”.

 

[tominator]

good to know, space ranger :rockin: are u a SNAFU member? i haven't taken that plunge yet, but it sounds like a good idea. I shop at vegas homebrew for my stuff, good shop and lots of answered questions!

 

[tominator]

btw discooby, what are you using as brew water here in vegas? i've been using bottled drinking water...

 

[discooby]

I haven’t had a chance to attend any SNAFU meetings but it’s on my list and I’d love to talk with other home brewers in person. The brew water is a very good question, something I’ve tried to work-on in the past (water chemistry) and I think, maybe due to the selective complexity, it’s something easily overlooked. I usually brew hefeweizens and dunkelweizens so I use (for 10gal batches, all grain) about 4 gallons of Vegas tap water in the mash and 4 gal to sparge (the hard water in Vegas actually matches pretty close with Munich, Germany (according to BeerTools… and my limited understanding)). But I have yet to really monitor the mash ph.

The rest of the water I use comes from “Water-to-go” on Rancho and Charleston; they have a water report though it’s incomplete, dated and faded. But, I like this water as its RO and almost void of all minerals / salts / etc. and I’m assuming its consistent. My thought is: if the beer is good but could be better, look at not only the ingredients and technique but also the water chemistry.

It’s been a while since I’ve tried tackling this so a relook might be in order; in fact I’d love to speak to someone with real water chemistry knowledge. In the meantime, I think my dunkelweizens have come out great; I just kegged a Belgium wit (its okay… maybe a little green) and previously a dbl chocolate stout which came out really good. I’m sure it’s due to the darker malts affecting the mash ph (vs. the Belgium wit and hefes coming in a little “lacking something&#8221.

 

[tominator]

i've just read a thread or 2 about kegging and i'm not as intimidated by it as i thought i would be. a few more brews and i might go that route. :sigh: more equipment to buy lol